Comprehension passage: India’s federal architecture and cooperative federalism

Sample passage: India's Constitution opens with a deliberate phrase: the country is a Union of States, not a federation. The drafting committee chose those words to signal that while powers would be shared between the Centre and the states, the Union itself was indissoluble. The Seventh Schedule divides legislative competence into three lists, and Articles 245 to 263 supply the machinery for inter-governmental contact. For most of the first three decades, that machinery was tilted heavily towards New Delhi. Article 356 was invoked more than ninety times, governors acted as agents of the ruling party, and the divisible pool of taxes was treated as a gift from the Centre rather than a constitutional entitlement. The 1973 Kesavananda judgment, the Sarkaria Commission of 1988, and the slow rise of coalition governments after 1989 began to rebalance the relationship. Today the architecture looks formally cooperative: finance commissions transfer over forty per cent of central taxes to the states, the GST Council takes most indirect-tax decisions by consensus, and NITI Aayog has replaced the directive Planning Commission. Yet friction persists. Cesses and surcharges, which sit outside the divisible pool, have grown faster than shareable taxes. Governors continue to delay assent to state bills. Central agencies are deployed selectively, and disputes over the chancellor's role in state universities have reached the Supreme Court. The deeper point is that federalism in India is a process, not a static structure. It must be re-negotiated every time the economy, the technology of governance, or the social compact changes. The healthiest form of conflict resolution is institutional dialogue, not litigation, which freezes positions and leaves the losing side aggrieved.

Model comprehension answers:

1. The Constitution describes India as a Union of States, rather than a federation, to convey that the constituent units cannot legally secede from the whole. The drafters wished to retain the federal sharing of powers between the Centre and the states while denying any state a right of withdrawal. The phrasing therefore signals indissolubility and a deliberate tilt towards a strong centre in matters of national integrity, even as ordinary legislative competence is divided across three lists.

2. The Centre-state balance has shifted through three forces: the rise of coalition governments after 1989, which forced negotiation across ideological lines; the institutional reform recommended by the Sarkaria Commission and reinforced by the Punchhi Commission; and the constitutional embedding of fiscal devolution through successive finance commissions. The GST Council and NITI Aayog have added consultative venues. Together these have moved practice from directive central planning towards negotiated cooperation, even where asymmetries of power remain visible.

3. The persistent sources of friction are four. First, the growing share of cesses and surcharges, which lie outside the divisible pool and shrink states' tax share. Second, the selective use of central investigative agencies in opposition-ruled states, which corrodes trust. Third, gubernatorial delay or refusal of assent to state legislation, which transfers political contests into constitutional offices. Fourth, post-2014 disputes over the chancellor's role in state universities, which have reached the courts and remained politically inflamed.

4. The author treats Indian federalism as a process rather than a static structure because the constitutional text alone cannot anticipate every technological, economic and social change. Each generation must re-negotiate the boundary between Union and state competence — through finance commissions, the GST Council and judicial review. Federalism is therefore a continuous practice of accommodation; its health is measured not by an absence of disagreement but by the quality of the conversation between governments that produces resolution.

5. The phrase 'institutional dialogue' refers to structured, deliberative venues — the Inter-State Council, the GST Council, parliamentary committees — where Union and state representatives debate and compromise on shared problems. The author prefers dialogue to litigation because court rulings produce binary outcomes that freeze a question without settling the political grievance behind it, while institutional negotiation distributes the cost of compromise and leaves the working relationship intact for later cooperation.